Every minute of every day people express their sentiments and write them down in news articles, blog posts, other web content, and the like. Some people may regard themselves as too famous to write down their sentiments, but journalists, bloggers and other content creators are more than willing to document their feelings. Often times a famous radio commentator will bash a politician, or a politician will thrash a Hollywood actress. On occasion, a true act of heroism will be recognized, and all sorts of famous folk will follow with praise. Whether depressing or uplifting, disturbing or unnerving, tapping in to the sentiments of key actors on the world stage can be highly informative and engaging.
Determining the underlying sentiment of an article using a computing system may be difficult because of the variety of styles people employ in expressing sentiment—a comment may be an offhanded compliment in amongst an otherwise negative article, for example. Current techniques often involve traditional keyword searching for particular negative or positive words (verbs) such as “hate,” “like,” “distaste,” etc. to guesstimate the underlying sentiment of an article.